Guthrie Govan

Erotic Cakes - The Backing Tracks

Contents

IntroductionWavesErotic CakesWonderful Slippery ThingNer NerFivesUncle SkunkSevensEricSlidey BoyRhode Island ShredHangover

IntroductionGreetings, one and all!Guthrie here...Hearty felicitations and congratulations onyour purchase of this Erotic Cakes Jamtracks package.Im happy to report thatGeneral MIDI and his Magic Band were in no way involved with themanufacture of these backing tracks: theyre remixes ofthe actual album sessions. Apart from the factthat the most prominent guitar partshave been removed, what you havehereis the exactly same as the album -Pete and Seths splendid drum n bass contributions are very much in evidence, as isJans unparalleled mixing prowess - so hopefully youll enjoy the sound quality and real band vibe of the tracks...May you have a Most Excellent time jamming along!About the transcriptions...Its probable that youve grown accustomed to the everything on a platefashion in which instrumental guitar music isnormally transcribed. Perhaps youve even become somewhat dependent on the comforting notion that a transcription cantell you exactly what to do at any given moment in the track.If so, you may atrst feel a little perplexed (oreven cheated!) by theaccompanying pdfs and PowerTab les, which offer onlythe main themes and general harmonic structure for each track - rather than documenting every last string squeak and pickscrape in slavish detail... Well, Ive had many a discussion with the good people at Jamtrack Central about the best way topresent this material, and weve always concluded that our approach should reect the spirit in which the music was writtenand recorded.Interestingly, Ive met a number of fellow musicians over the years who seemed to think that every note on the Cakes albumwas composed. In reality, the intent behind this music was much closer to thejazz mentality - ineach tune, the composedpassages are interspersed with sections where the guitar ismeant to improvise around a predetermined chord progression.(The main melody fromsomething like Waves, for instance, is entirely composed - so it pretty much remains the same fromone gig to thenext. On the other hand, thering modulated robot solo from the titletrack is something which could never,ever happen again.To my wayof thinking, however, thats absolutely ne -it was nevermeant to bereplicated...)In general, the solos you hearon the album arent meant tobe set in stone: theyre just recordings of whatever Ihappened tofeel like playing when the engineer hit the red button on one particular occasion, in a studio in North Hollywood, several yearsago...The parts youll nd notated in the accompanying transcriptions comprise every composed note from the album. Onceyouve worked out how all the key parts t into the overall structure, youll essentially know the songs as well as I do! At thatpoint, I would urge you to start having a ridiculous amount of fun with the solo sections, taking every liberty imaginable in thename of injecting some of your own personality into the music.Some general thoughtsIn a moment, youll nd somebrief tips on the kind of note choices I would recommend for the solo sections in each track.Before we get to anyof that stuff, however, Id like to share a few general observations with you.Much of what follows is based on myexperience of the kind of guitar players who most commonly attend mygigs andclinics. These guys (and yes, they are almost exclusively guys!) often have bucketloads of theoretical knowledge, coupled witha terrifyingly high level ofmetronome-honed technical prociency... yet so many of them suffer from an overwhelming lack ofcondence when they tentativelyapproach what they perceive as the dauntingly nebulous conceptof improvisation.(If you dont relate to the above - or youre just the impatient type! - and youd rather skip ahead to the more specic stufflater on, I wont be offended... but thefollowing bit pretty much sums up my whole approach tonote choice, etc- so at leastsome of it may prove enlightening...)Given that the tips belowmostly consist of various scales and modes, Ifeel duty-bound to say this: whilst scalesareundeniably good things, I suspect that guitarists asa breed spend way too much timefocusing on them. This isunderstandable: theyre easy to teach, easy to learn -provided youre willing to put the requisite amount of hours in -and thespeed at which you can play various scales offers an appealing yardstick by which a players progress can be measured...To be fair, its obviously useful to be able to classify a certain selection of notes as right whilst dismissing all the remainingoptions as wrong - but if your goal is to make a melodic statement with any kind of musical value, you need to take thingsone step further and become familiar with the distinctive mood and quality of each note, relative to the harmonic context ofthe music as a whole. (Whizzing up and down a memorised scale pattern on autopilot is certainly fun for a while - unless youpick the wrong scale, of course - but this tactic eventually leads to frustration when you realise that the fretboard pattern istelling you what to play, rather than the other way around.)The reality is that, at any point during an improvisation, youre perfectly entitled to play any one of the twelve notes of thechromatic scale. To do so with condence, however, requires the ability to predict the overall effect of any given note beforeyou commit to actually playing it.(I can think of atleast three obvious ways to improve your abilities in this area: transcribing stuff by ear, trying to sing alongwith your playing - which cab increase your melodic awareness immeasurably - and simply slowing downwhen you jam overa track, just to let each note breathe for long enough that you can hear the effect it has over the chord in the backing music.)Maintaining interest throughout the course of an improvisation is largely a matter of balancing tension and release. Toaccomplish this in real time, the musician has to make aesthetic decisions on a note-by-note basis. Rather than trying toremain fully conscious of all the theoretical stuff when you play, I think its best in the long term to aim for a more instinctiveunderstanding of how things sound,and this can be developed simply by listening to what youre playing and evaluating itstension/stability as you go along.If this sounds daunting, remember that you learnedto talk in exactlythe same way, and that you can now string togethercomplex sentences in your native tongue quite effortlessly - without ever pausing to think about (for example) the correct wayto decline an irregular verb! You just do it, because thats the way you learned - and doesnt it feel good?!Thus, any one of the play scale x over chord y tips listed below actually takes all of the following as read:Over any given chord, the root notewill always be the most stable sounding note choice. Thatdoesnt necessarily mean itsalways the best note choice: all good things in moderation!The other notes contained within that chord will tend to yield a satisfying melodic quality. Each note does this in a subtlydifferent way: the fth provides a nice all-purpose thickness - somewhat reminiscent ofthe root note, but with slightlylessstability - whereas the third imparts a happy orsad character... and so on.If a note occurs in yourchosen scale or mode but notin the chord itself, it will add an interesting new colour - some ofthesenotes sound more pleasant than others, depending on thebrightness or darkness of the scale/mode in question. (The#4in a lydian mode sounds pretty enough that you can safely linger on it without alarming people, whereas the b2 in a phrygianmode is a different beast altogether, and as such it needs to be handled with care...)The remaining chromatic notes - those suspicious-looking pitches which dont belong in the scale at all - also have their uses.If you were to slip one in discreetly between two neighbouring scale tones, itwould most likely create apleasing sense ofmovement - but your listener might scarcely notice that youd just played a wrong note. If you were to draw more attentionto the same wrong note (by playing it in isolation, increasing its duration, making it louder, repeating it, placing it on a mainbeat within the rhythmic pulse of the music... or any combination of those things) your listener would almost certainly feel alittle uncomfortable. Perverse though it may sound, this can be a good thing: if you feed your listeners with a constant diet ofobvious root notes and saccharine thirds, theyll eventuallystart to take thesegood notes for granted and youll runthe riskof losing their interest... so from time totime its good to throw in a little tension, just to keep everyone on their toes...The balance between these different note-avours will help to determine whether your playing sounds stable or unpredictable,melodic or dissonant, soothingor challenging, earthilybluesy or bewilderingly jazzy, etc etc.Youre the boss, afterall - itsyour solo!

WavesSolo TipsJust for fun, lets start at theend of the tune, where youll besoloing over the progression from the A section. The bad newsis that, at various points throughout theprogression, youll need to use F# aeolian, E mixolydian, Bdorian, C# phrygian and Dlydian. The good news is that all those modes contain exactly the same notes, so you can start by simply using a single scaleshape as your guide: just try tolisten to the notes ineach chord throughout the progression.The B section can be tackled in exactly the same way - though our miracle scale shape now encompasses the additionalmode of A ionian over the A/C# (albeit eetingly!)For the C section, a little more awareness of the changes is required. Try the following:Am11/Fmaj7#11 - use A dorian/F lydian (which contain the same notes)C#m7/Amaj7#11 - use C#dorian/A lydian (be careful whenthe C#m7 appears for the rst time- after the initial hurdle ofacknowledging that modulation, youll realise that youre basically doing the same thing as before, but two whole toneshigher...)E/D, D, Bm11 - use D lydian/B dorianAmaj7 - use A lydian here. Admittedly, A ionian should really make more sense when you consider the harmony in theprevious few bars... but I think bar 29 of the transcription marks a very pronounced scene change,and I quite like theadded brightness offered by the #4 of the lydian mode atthis point. (Why not try bothand draw your own conclusions?)

you may alsolike....Guthries phenomenal soloover ourLarry Carltonstylebacking track. Over one millionhits (and counting) on our YouTubesite. Complete video, backing track, solo and tab transcription -all to our usual high standard.